The Great Burtsby

What if Jay Gatsby had caught Daisy? They might have looked like this. The supercool jacket with the white piping was actually bought for a Great Gatsby party. Ditto the white shirt, since Burt Keppler swore off white shirts when he left the Navy.

Great Gatsby costume parties blossomed when the Mia Farrow/Robert Redford movie came out in the mid-70's. Naturally my parents threw themselves into the spirit. Dad's outfit included sharp pink and white seersucker trousers and a straw boater. Mom's hat was the circumference of a bistro table.

Once we comb through the archives, I hope to post a photo of them wearing the full regalia.
The tie, of course, would have been an anachronism. In just about any era.

Laughing at McCarthy Rally Not Good for Health

A sign that we may not know what times we live in at the time: Mom and Dad at a McCarthy rally on a lark. "We just wanted to see what it was all about," Mom told me. They went, as you see, with other photographers. They are so far unaware that nobody else is laughing. But eventually, they tumbled to the realization that the other members of the audience knew these people didn't share their fervor, and the mood was turning ugly.

My parents' little group got up slowly, as you would if you didn't want to incite animals to attack, and moved toward the exit.

A woman swung her purse at my father's head, but she missed. So they emerged unscathed, and the McCarthy rally remained a rally rather than a riot.

I had heard about this incident from Mom long ago when we studied McCarthyism in school, but I never knew there was a photograph of it until Mom showed me this. On the back, it says, "Lisa Larsen, Life."

Lisa Larsen was the Life photographer who took the famous image of Jack and Jackie Kennedy at their wedding reception, the one where the radiant Jackie, seated at the table, leans forward, all tanned, elegant shoulders against her lacy white veil, sharing something fey and witty with her companions. You've seen it.

Lisa was herself a fey and witty presence, and easily ingratiated herself with her subjects. She died young, but Mom said she was a delightful person. Some of her photographs became iconic, like those of the Kennedys' Camelot.

Burtday

Today is my father's birthday. His, and Queen Elizabeth's. To celebrate Papa-san's birthday, I offer another of his celebrated ties, above. Note the coffee stain, or perhaps a it's a nice bordeaux. This tie pulled up to tables at some great restaurants.

I propose that April 21st be known as Burtday, and that celebrants take their wildest ties out on the town. Festivities include inviting friends, fighting for the check, tipping the waitstaff generously, and photographing the whole thing, naturally.

Or donate what you would have spent to Rehabilitation Through Photography. But you can still wear the tie, and toast Herbert Keppler, a wonderful man doing wonderful things, and having a simply wonderful time.

Fun with Herbert Keppler, Part 1 in a Zillion-part series

Daddy loved wearing costumes (aside from his eye-popping workaday wardrobe). This is a card he printed up for a costume party where he went as his brilliant putative ancestor. He also loved anything unusual enough to require an explanation: not the usual car, but a Fiat shaped like a toaster. Or a green-and-cream Rolls-Royce convertible. Or a tiny Suzuki Samurai, known in town as the Ice Cream Truck.

Not the usual ball-point, but a Parker Vacumatic fountain pen (delicate, crotchety, all his shirt pockets had green inkstains). Not the usual winter hat, but a deerstalker. Not the usual gift bottle of wine, but one with a label: "from the Cellars of Chez Keppler." Not the usual suburban house, but a stone house with a turquoise copper roof.

And of course, not the usual camera, but a (name the monstrously large or diabolically miniaturized, prototype). We never went to any function but he would unveil the latest strangely shaped, ultra-advanced not-yet-released model and people would gather around him crying, "What's that?"

A Lovely Gathering

Yesterday, Monday morning, was my father's memorial at the New School. Thank you to all the colleagues and friends of his, from his early days at Modern Photography to his last years at Popular, who made time to come and pay tribute to him, and make their appreciation of him known to his family. Hachette-Filipacci decided his name is going to be on the masthead of Popular Photography, permanently. This is like the magazine equivalent of retiring the player's number, only more extraordinary; I think it's never happened before.

Quite a lot of mention was made of Daddy's neckwear: "Funky." "Ugly." "I was wearing the ugliest tie I could find, and his was ten times uglier."

I don't think so.

Wild? Often. Busy? Undoubtedly. But after Admiral Farragut Academy, the N.R.O.T.C. and the Navy, nobody was going to rope Burt Keppler into wearing another uniform. He also swore off white shirts, and that he wore them in Japan is a tribute to his respect for Japanese custom, because he never, never, wore a white shirt on American shores again.

The shirt/tie combinations could vibrate sometimes, and Mom tried to intervene, but he got up earlier than she did, so she bears no responsibility for his daywear.

But the ties themselves aren't ugly at all. They're amazing.




Here is the speech I gave at the memorial:

Remembering My Father

I want to thank Hatchette-Filipacci Media for hosting this memorial, and Dad's co-workers at Popular Photography for putting it together, and the New School for providing the space. And thank you all for coming.

Daddy really had two families--- he had us and he had you, his photographic family. It's been wonderful for us reading the nice things you and people around the world have been saying about him. He would keep letters from admirers in a file marked "Keppler's Kudos" which leads me to a favor I want to ask you.

As Burt Keppler's photographic family, you are vessels of Keppler stories and we, his Croton-on-Hudson family, would like to know them.

We want more of his wit: He took great delight in oddities and sudden flights of fancy, such as when he took us children to Haiti and there were rats in the trees. Gigantic rats---you could see their tails hanging down. He said, "All right, the first child to take a rat by the tail, swing him three times over your head and throw him fifteen feet gets a penny!" Then he chortled, because he loved the notion so much, and was so pleased with himself. It was so much fun watching him amuse himself.

In his early days at Modern Photography, he really wrote half the magazine himself, so he would write under pseudonyms like, "Joe Crayon," which came to him in a dream.
That sort of playfulness was underappreciated when he was at Harvard. In Freshman English, he handed in a research paper entitled, "Where Pink Elephants Go When People Aren't Seeing Them." The story is too long to go into here, you can ask me after, but I can tell you it involved a bar on Third Avenue.

The professor had to admit it was a well-written paper, but it came back with a single-word comment: "Facetious."

We want more of his erudition:I remember one Sunday morning long ago we spent the morning talking about isinglass: was it used for windshields in electric cars like the Maxwell, or was it sturgeon bladder? Actually, it's both. The dictionary says, "Don't get them confused." It's hard to see through a sturgeon bladder.

We want more of his kindness: He had friends everywhere, and he helped some of the ones in underdeveloped countries, to the extent that somewhere in India, there is a concern called the Herbert Colour Lab. That's the best tribute I ever heard. Better than an airport.

We want more of his sparkle: You may have seen the Keppler Christmas tree on our cards through the years. This tree was exactingly decorated according to Daddy's Standards for Tree Decoration, which dictated that it be completely and evenly covered, from the trunk out, every twig. He would direct operations while we loaded up the tree until it was a perfect reflection of the enthusiasms of Burt Keppler in ornament form: Dirigibles, Automobiles, Cameras of course, Egyptian ornaments, English ornaments, Japanese ornaments, Fish, Shakespeare, Miss Piggy, the Red Tom ornament, the Green Kathy ornament, the fiddles and bird feeders for my mother--- we never had tinsel, there wasn't room. One year, we hung the last ornament, stepped back, and my mother sighed with contentment. "I don't think anybody has a prettier tree, anywhere," she said.
Daddy said, "Joe Crayon has!" and they both fell down laughing.

Well, we want more of that. That's the favor I want to ask you. We want, we need, to preserve as much of his sparkle, his erudition, his kindness, his Burtishness, as possible. So. If you could send us your memories of him, it would help us. You can send them to me by regular mail, my address is next to the guest book, or you can go to a tribute site I started. It's just a simple blog, since Daddy's technological genius passed me by, but here's the address: burtkeppler.blogspot.com. I really should have called it Keppler's Kudos.

Daddy loved his work. He loved photography, and he loved being with you, his friends and colleagues. It was a great pleasure for him to work with you, and for that I thank you. Hooray for Herbert Keppler.

Unique in All the World

This is where I hope we can all share memories of my father, one of the brightest lights in photography and in my own life. The memorial is tomorrow, so I will post some good stories later. My apologies to the photographer who took the above picture, which I cribbed off the popphoto website--I actually don't have Burt Keppler snapshots handy---he was always the one behind the camera! Please feel free to comment. Thank you so much.